agencies
Beijing
US climate envoy John Kerry arrived in Beijing on Sunday for political talks, Chinese state television reported.
Kerry is the third-highest ranking US politician to visit China within a few weeks, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The trip is scheduled to last until Wednesday.
Growing tensions between the two rival powers prompted China to temporarily suspend regular climate talks with Washington last August.
This was in protest against the visit of the then-speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.
Other points of contention between Beijing and Washington include trade issues, Chinese support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war against Ukraine, and China’s territorial claims in the South and East China Seas.
Kerry’s visit was "another sign that both sides are making efforts to halt the downward spiral in China-US relations,” an editorial in the Chinese state newspaper China Daily said before the US politician’s arrival. As China and the United States are the two largest emitters of climate-damaging greenhouse gases, they also have a "special responsibility.” As Kerry arrived in Beijing on Sunday for a long-awaited trip to restart climate negotiations, the US climate envoy stepped off the plane into one of the hottest summers ever recorded in the Chinese capital.
Since 1951, Beijing has seen temperatures breaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) on 11 days — with almost half of them occurring in the past few weeks, including a new record for the city’s hottest day in June.
In the United States, an extreme heat wave is also swelling, with temperatures in the Southwest soaring as high as 120°F (49°C).
It’s a global problem: the planet’s hottest day ever was recorded for four straight days earlier this month. "If anything, this is the situation that should most bring China and the US back on the same page,” said Li Shuo, senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace China.
"Regardless of their political differences, the impacts of climate change have now become a common experience for both countries — it’s no longer a hypothetical crisis or analytical challenge, but a living reality that can be felt through the skin.” As the world’s two biggest polluters — with China’s emissions of planet-heating pollution more than double those of the US — the two countries account for nearly 40 percent of global emissions.
This means attempts to stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis will need to involve these two powerhouse nations drastically cutting fossil fuel production — yet climate cooperation between them has been largely frozen for nearly a year amid heightened geopolitical tensions.
Last August, Beijing cut off climate talks with Washington in protest at then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan — in the middle of the worst heat wave China had seen in six decades. More than two months of scorching heat dried up reservoirs, killed crops and livestock, crippled power supplies and led to rolling blackouts in some of the largest and most prosperous Chinese metropolises.
This year, sweltering temperatures have arrived even earlier, impacting hundreds of millions of residents and again putting huge strains on the country’s electricity grid. China Energy Investment Corporation, the world’s largest generator of coal-fired power, said its production of electricity reached a historic high on Monday.
The unrelenting heat waves highlight the urgency for the US and China to resume cooperation, as the unfolding climate crisis will not wait for the two countries to fix their relations first, experts say.